


Kaiju SOLDIER

by dogmatix



Category: Final Fantasy VII, Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Crossover, Gen, cloud made it into SOLDIER, more a fusion than a crossover, only it's not quite the same SOLDIER, zack is awesome
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-30
Updated: 2013-07-30
Packaged: 2017-12-21 20:18:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/904460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dogmatix/pseuds/dogmatix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s sink or swim for Cloud Strife, newest member of SOLDIER.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I stuck the FFVII map in for reference so people can know where I’m talking about. Mostly it's the bit between Wutai and the western continent.
> 
> I also had to invent a whole bunch of names for the wet bits since FFVII DOESN’T NAME THE OCEANS. Or the seas. Or rivers. And how the heck are there so few coastal towns? This is not actually a problem mind you. Unless you’re writing a Pacific Rim crossover. :P

 

“Strife, wake up!” A sharp poke accompanied the command, making Cloud twitch and groan.  His head felt like it was three sizes too large, and blood pounded unpleasantly at this temples.

“Strife! Damn incompetent-“

“Easy doc, I got him,” another voice interjected, deeper and familiar.  Zack.

Cloud blinked his eyes open, fighting the gummy feeling of too much sleep and the rolling nausea of the SOLDIER treatment.  “Z’ck?”

“Yeah Spike, it’s me.  Hate to drag you out like this, but we got word that Leviathan Outpost spotted a Kaiju going through the Wutai Pinch early this morning.”

“Whdn’a?” Cloud tried to swallow down the nausea, blinking hard.  “ _Through_ the Pinch?” It was a struggle to get his brain thinking, but he was mostly able to shake off the after-effects of the treatment. He was used to it by now, after all.

“Yeah, not their usual pattern,” Zack said, a tightness under his usual confident tone.

Cloud grunted in agreement as Zack helped him stagger upright.  The Kaiju’s point of origin had been roughly tracked to somewhere in the Northern Sea, somewhere between the Wutai Sea and the Northern Straits.  Usually the gigantic monsters attacked along the Wutai coast or tried to slip through the Northern Straits to get to Costa del Sol, Midgar, or Junon.

“Why’r we only hearing ‘bout this now?”

“Dunno, some bureaucratic hiccup maybe.”

The Wutai Pinch was where the Western Continent and Wutai almost touched, two thin fingers of land reaching for each other, marking the division between the Wutai Sea and Surt’s Gulf south of it.  Leviathan Outpost was the allied Wutanese and Shinra research facility where Kaiju were brought to be dissected and studied.  It was a growing town now, with many of the refugees from Wutai’s capital city flocking there.  Kaiju were usually brought there once dead, but no Kaiju had ever ranged that far south under its own power.  At least, not that anyone knew of.

Which meant- “Where’s it heading?”

“No way to tell. Maybe it's just exploring. Maybe somewhere in Surt’s Gulf.”

Surt’s Gulf.  There were a few Wutanese towns on their side of Surt’s Gulf, and the same for the Western Continent.  No large cities though, which the Kaiju were most attracted to.  Nibelheim was pretty far up in the mountains, but not actually that far from the ocean.  Cloud felt a pang of worry, but Nibelheim’s small size meant that it wasn’t much of a target. 

"Except there's not really anything in Surt's Gulf," Zack echoed Cloud's thoughts.

“We're not that far out from Surt's Gulf though. What if it's coming here?” Cloud asked, heartbeat picking up.  Cosmo Canyon was much larger than it had been only a few years ago.  President Lazard wanted all options against the Kaiju explored, and Cosmo Canyon had some interesting theories on materia and human neuroscience, some of which were starting to pan out, as much as Professor Hojo complained about wasted resources. 

The small city that had sprung up in the bay close to Cosmo Canyon, dubbed Cosmo Beach, might be large enough to attract a Kaiju.

“Maybe. Or it might be trying to sneak around the Western Continent, get to Gongaga or maybe even Junon. It’s all speculation at this point.”  Gongaga.  Zack’s home, and large enough to be a target.

“Damn.” Cloud was walking on his own by now.  Jogging really, as they made their way to the giant hanger bay where Fenrir was stored.

“Either way,” Zack said cheerfully – only partly faked, “we’re the closest Jeager if it decides to make landfall around here.”

“We’re not even officially cleared to fight,” Cloud pointed out.  He wasn’t panicking, really he wasn’t.  But. “We haven’t even drifted together!”

“I know. But you’ve got a good shine on you, and it’s us or nothing,” Zack summarized.  Cloud hadn’t even had the chance to look in a mirror yet, so he’d have to take Zack’s word for his ‘shine’ – the glow that SOLDIER eyes picked up during the treatment.  Cloud was technically done with his treatment as of yesterday, although he’d slept straight through from then till now.

“Fair! Strife! Tendo sent me to find you,” the large red-pelted wolf-lion called, meeting the two SOLDIERS as they hit the hanger.  “We’ve had word from Umachi – the Kaiju passed into the Southern Ocean a few minutes ago. They report it looked like a Category II.”

Umachi. The southeastern-most town in Wutai. So the Kaiju had passed out of Surt’s Gulf.  Now the question was if it would swing around into Cosmo Bay or continue on to Gongaga or beyond.

Entering the Jeager hanger, they were met with a wall of sound, with people yelling to be heard over the various mechanical hisses and squeals and clanks as the towering Jeager in their midst was prepped for deployment three days early.  The volume was staggering, making Cloud falter for a moment.  The SOLDIER process enhanced their senses somewhat, and Cloud hadn’t had a chance to adjust to the last boost yet.  Zack put a hand on his shoulder, giving him a reassuring squeeze. Cloud took a deep breath and gave Zack a nod in return. 

The three of them threaded the barely-organized chaos on the hanger floor, avoiding running techs with coiled cables or groups of people moving the last scaffolding out of the way.  In the middle of it all stood the Jeager. His Jeager. _T_ _heir_ Jeager. Fenrir.  He was an island of calm in the sea of commotion, techs and grunts moving around and over him like ants.  Cloud found himself unable not to sneak looks at the matte black mechanical monster.  

The wolf-lion Nanaki led them up the stairs and up into the control room. “Tendo, I found them,” he called to the black-haired young man frantically directing a group of Jeager techs through last-minute adjustments.

 “Great!” Tendo Choi said as he snagged the two SOLDIERS and thrust them into the suit storage area adjacent to the control room, where the suit techs were already waiting. “You guys get suited up and we’ll have Fenrir ready to go in a few minutes.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes the drift is different from in Pacific Rim. Yes there's a reason for it.

Cloud tried to help as much as possible as the suit techs hustled him into his navy blue Jeager suit, a skintight mesh with protective plating, like a modern suit of armour.  He wasn’t sure how much of it was psychological and how much was practical; it felt right to have armour on when going into battle, but if anything got through the Jeager to the cockpit, chances were they were dead anyway.  Zack was being just as efficiently manhandled into his own Jeager suit.  Cloud felt last-minute panic set in as he contemplated what they were about to do.  Would he fail?  Would Cloud be the reason that Fenrir couldn’t even get out the hanger bay door? Odin and Hel, what had possessed Cloud to think that he could cut it as a SOLDIER, as a Jeager pilot?

Cloud felt his breathing start to speed up and forced himself to take a deep breath.  Yes, he was hardly the most impressive physical specimen, but the Jeager program didn’t require bodybuilder physiques.  As long as he survived basic bootcamp, the psych eval, and the SOLDIER process, which bestowed the ability to drift, he was in.  He almost hadn’t made it, had in fact had some of the worst reactions to the process out of all the SOLDIER candidates, but he’d made it. He’d hung on by his fingernails and insisted that he could make it, and he had.  Zack had even praised his stubbornness, which Cloud thought was a silly thing to get excited about.

Then again, Zack’s mentor and previous partner had disappeared under mysterious circumstances some months ago, leaving Zack without a partner, and effectively without a Jeager.  Maybe stubborn _was_ a good quality after all.  Cloud clenched his jaw in mulish determination.  He would _never_ abandon Zack.  Not ever.

“Ready to go?” Zack grinned and ruffled Cloud’s hair, making Cloud start and flail a bit.

“Y-yeah, I’m ready!”  Hel, could he sound any more like a green recruit?  Sure his simulator scores were good, solid, but he’d never drifted, never been part of that meld, never seen real combat.

“Good to hear,” Zack grinned, and then there was no more time.  They were handed their helmets and shoved unceremoniously down the corridor that led to Fenrir.

Cloud stepped automatically into the clamps, felt the Jeager move around him to attach to his suit.  The helmet felt tight and suffocating.

“Pilot One, ready,” Zack sounded off to his right.

“Pilot Two, ready,” Cloud sounded off in echo.

“Roger that,” Tendo’s voice came through the speakers. “Pilot to pilot connection, engaging.”

Oh gods, this was it.

The first time two pilots drifted was always a bit hit or miss.  Reeve Tuesti, the genius behind the Jeagers, was producing Jeagers strong enough and large enough to take on the Kaiju, but artificial intelligences weren’t up to the job of fighting on that scale in realtime.

So, the Jeager needed a human pilot. Shinra had poured all its resources into finding a way to integrate human and machine.  Simple controls weren’t fast enough, sensitive enough, intuitive enough.  The invention of the neural interface was both logical and so advanced even the scientists who’d built it almost didn’t understand it.

There was another problem, however.  It was quickly discovered that a single pilot simply couldn’t handle the neural load of a Jeager alone.  Two pilots were needed.  Two brains, to share the load.  But there was no way of predicting if two pilots would be a good match until they melded, or drifted, as it became known.  You could end up with a good team or two comatose pilots.

Then Hojo had invented the SOLDIER process.  It reduced the risks of a bad drift, allowing SOLDIERS a 94% successful drift rate, as opposed to only 29% successful drift rate for regular humans.  And even if SOLDIER pilots didn’t succeed in drifting, it was never fatal.

And as a happy side-effect, the SOLDIER process made the recipients stronger, faster, hardier.  Something that came in handy when you were being shaken around like a rubber ball in a tin can.  Or that’s what Zack had said, at least.

Cloud heard something cycling up, and then he was drowning in another mind.  He’d been told what to expect, the surge of sharpening intensity and rage.  Riptide.  He knew that both of their eyes were blazing, far past the glow SOLDIERs always had.  They snarled in tandem, jerking against the restraints clamped around Fenrir’s wrists and ankles, against the massive clamp built into the canyon’s bedrock that anchored Fenrir’s torso, reducing their enraged struggles to aborted jerks and twitches.

 _Ride it out_ , Zack had told him.  _Don’t fight it._  

So he let the rage crest, felt his _packmate/otherself_ doing the same, as they melded, layering into each other. Becoming one.  Zackcloud felt the rage start to ebb, and looked at themselves, teeth already bared in anticipatory snarls curling up into vicious grins.  They’d better get to _kill_ something before they unhooked from Fenrir, they thought in happy bloodlust.

The rage ebbed some more, settling into a dull burn in the back of their minds, and-  huhn.  That was strange.

Zackcloud blinked. He/they remembered playing at the beach, summers in Gongaga and Uncle Tobias yelling at them not to swim too far out, he/they remembered the freezing winters in Nibelheim, too cold to go out and play, not that the other kids ever let them join in the games, but that was okay they had their mom, and the mountain.

Zackcloud frowned at themselves.  He/they knew that this kind of extensive memory sharing hadn’t happened between Angeal and Zack.  There, drifting had been a bit like a form of amnesia, actually.  Angealzack had known broadly who he/they were and what was happening, and had had a sense of directive and purpose, but memory had been hit-or-miss and only seemed to extend back a few weeks. They both got back all their memories afterwards, but during the drift Angealzack just didn’t worry or care about it.  Not that Angealzack had been the type to navelgaze in the first place, Zackcloud thought, amused. It just seemed to be the price they paid for getting to pilot a Jeager.

 But Zackcloud was both Zack and Cloud, fully, and he/they knew that he/they would go back to being separate people after they stopped drifting.  It was odd, but also nice.

“Hey, Planet to Fenrir, you guys alive in there?” Tendo’s worried voice finally permeated Zackcloud’s confusion.

“We’re here,” Zackcloud answered, one voice from two throats.  The memory thing didn’t seem to be affecting them negatively, so Zackcloud decided to deal with the odd phenomenon later. “How’s the neural drift look?”

“Really good, actually,” Tendo said, sounding surprised but happy.  “The neuroscience guys are going to be pestering you both after this, count on it.  So, you guys want to move around a bit?”

“That’s a trick question, right?” Zackcloud snarked, almost vibrating out of their suits with the need to _move_.

The clamps holding Fenrir immobile released with metallic groans, letting the Jeager loose at last.

Just as the emergency claxons started to blare.

The Kaiju had arrived.


End file.
